If you were pop-culturally aware in the 1970's, you knew Burt Reynolds even if you never saw a single one of his movies. You see, Burt Reynolds was everywhere. There he is on Merv Griffin. Ooh, he's Johnny's first guest tonight! Daytime TV? Why, look -- he's on Dinah Shore's show! He's the cover story this week on People Magazine! It's all about his romance with Sally Field! Then there's Cosmopolitan Magazine...
Burt Reynolds could thank his winning personality for his storied movie career. Fans showed up at the movie theater to see a Reynolds film because they liked the guy. They liked his sly smile, his rapacious arched brow, and his cackling laugh.
I don't remember if I ever saw Smokey and the Bandit; I think I probably did, but it wasn't memorable. It was silly and dumb. Even his country music co-stars couldn't lure me to his mid-career lowbrow movies.
I did see Deliverance, but I'll just say that Reynolds was not the most memorable aspect of that movie...
I also saw The Longest Yard, which was a good movie -- catch it sometime on the oldie movie channel.
Nowhere in his numerous obituaries is WW and the Dixie Dancekings mentioned. I saw that movie -- for the music. I have absolutely no memory of the film itself. And I thought that the music was really good, until I Googled the soundtrack and found that basically every song was performed by Jerry Reed, even though I swear Mel Tillis was a featured player. I think in 1975 I was so stunned that any flick would include (gasp!) country music that I was determined to support it with my three dollars. Apparently Ned Beatty was also in that film, and hopefully he had a less strenuous role then he did in Deliverance.
To see a Burt Reynolds flick was to leave the theater with a smile (mostly - Deliverance notwithstanding). Like I suppose Clark Gable and Cary Grant were in their day, when one slapped their dollars on the counter to buy a ticket to a Reynolds movie, they knew what they were getting.
Burt's career continued after the seventies ended, but by then most of us had moved on. He had a TV show called Evening Shade that I don't think I saw more than a snippet of one episode, but I'm sure he was good in it - Burt Reynolds good. I didn't see Boogie Nights, but I'll accept the critics' word that his performance was excellent.
I appreciate that Burt liked country music and wasn't ashamed to admit it. He was like Clint Eastwood in that respect. I didn't especially care about Reynolds' love life. Loni Anderson always seemed like a bit of a drama queen to me. Sally Field was a better choice; she was at least sweet and likeable. That was the extent of my interest in Burt's private life.
Two songs will always be associated with Burt Reynolds. Of course, the first:
And this one, even if you, like me, didn't appreciate the "artistic statement" of Smokey and the Bandit:
Rest in peace, Burt Reynolds. Thanks for the seventies.
The friends in my life were friends of a time. I may have even forgotten some who were once important to me. I'm not sure how others make friends, but mine have mostly have been through my various jobs. I know people who've had friends ever since high school. That didn't work out for me. My best friend from sixth grade through high school graduation, Alice, died. I did have other friends in school, but they were ancillary friends. I only had one best friend, and that's all I needed.
And truth be told, Alice and I stopped being friends around the time we turned twenty-one. We had wildly divergent lives -- I became a new mom and she was single and singing in a band. I was searingly hurt when I called her and wanted to drive over with my newborn son to visit and she responded indifferently. I never did go. That was the last conversation she and I ever had.
Once my kids were older and my then-husband and I escaped for an occasional night out, we'd sometimes patronize the club where Alice and her band played every weekend, and we'd ease into a table next to the one where the band took their breaks, but she and I never even acknowledged one another. If I had been older and wiser, I would have made the effort to at least walk over and make superficial conversation, but I waited for her to make the first move. She never did. Hurt feelings; hurt pride; confusion -- she and I had once been as close as two humans could be, and now we were strangers.
Several years later, my son called to tell me Alice had died, and I mourned silently -- I guess mostly for the times that could never be relived. I frankly didn't know her; I'd stopped knowing her in 1974. That didn't erase the eons when her friendship had buoyed me through the hell I was living at home; the afternoons she spent in my dank bedroom teaching me how to play guitar; the giggling inside jokes we'd shared.
I never again had a best friend.
When I secured my first "real" job in 1973, I made another friend. Her name was -- Alice.
The truth was, Alice and I most likely became friends because we were thrown together, but I liked her, despite (or because of) her crazy life. I lived vicariously through her adventures. Alice had come from a small town of approximately 600 souls, but apparently very enlightened souls. She was a mid-twentieth century girl living a twenty-first century life. Alice was tall and willowy and apparently exuded a scent that attracted all manner of male persons; elderly, teen-aged, and in between; and she reveled in it. When I met Alice's mom, I was shocked to encounter a tiny immigrant lady who struggled with the English language and who steamed up a batch of Borscht soup and delivered it in a Tupperware container to her daughter's flat. I liked Alice because she tossed off testosterone-stoked attention matter-of-factly, and she was funny, self-deprecating, and guileless. Alice was confident in her identity. I, on the other hand, was still straining to figure out who I was supposed to be.
Alice and I dwelled in an office in the rear of the State Health Department, along with a hard-bitten bleached-blonde supervisor we quickly came to hate. It didn't help matters that our supervisor's husband, like every other man on the planet, magically fell under Alice's spell and showed up unannounced at her apartment door one evening. The ensuing fallout was awkward. Not for me, of course. I frolicked in the tabloid headlines. But that tiny back room became perilous, with glinting knives whooshing too close to my jugular for comfort.
Meanwhile, the desktop transistor innocently played.
Unfortunately, no live Grand Funksters to be found, but still...
Yes, this was a thing (in fact, number 8 on the charts) in 1974:
This guy was unusual, but intriguing, and a helluva singer. Fortunately, this track is a bit more memorable than "The Streak":
Maria Muldaur, I don't think, ever had another hit, but this was huge in 1974, although I didn't have a camel to send to bed. I didn't even have a dog:
I tried to convince Alice, once she finally found "the one", after rabid experimentation, that she should feature this song in her wedding. She declined. I still think I'm right:
Upon first hearing this next track, I was perplexed, yet intrigued. This was an old BJ Thomas song, but BJ wouldn't have thought to do an "ooga-chalk-a" intro, I'm pretty sure. Weird songs were de rigeur in 1974. Jim Stafford was big (whatever happened to him?) with Spiders and Snakes, and especially "My Girl Bill". Paper Lace invented the "east side of Chicago". My tween-aged sister's music came into being, with "Beach Baby" and "Billy, Don't Be A Hero". My little brother was enamored by "Smokin' In The Boy's Room". Some blonde-headed geek had sunshine on his shoulder. One of the all-time worst recordings in history, "Havin' My Baby", somehow became a hit. Wings became huge.
In the meantime:
Carly and James were still married, and National Lampoon's Vacation not withstanding, everyone liked this:
The Hues Corporation, which was a poorly-conceived name for a band, had a big hit:
There was a hit that I never really appreciated until years later, by a guy who knew how to write a killer song.
My favorite songs from 1974:
But the absolute most memorable to me was this next song, which I tormented Alice with as I sang along to the radio. I suppose I thought I was being cute, and maybe my judgmental side slipped out. My crooning never failed to elicit an exasperated response.
Alice had a little walk-up apartment two blocks from the State Capitol, and every day at noon, the two of us would ride the elevator down from the eighteenth floor and click along the street in our polyester mini-dresses and high heels to enjoy a lunch of SpaghettiO's heated in an aluminum pan on her gas stove. I never once thought to volunteer the fifty-nine cents to cover the cost of our little meal. I was a rube.
My stint at the State Health Department was my first real job. It ended badly, but in the grand scheme of life, it mattered little, except for the memories it created.
Alice and I remained friends for a while. She was a bridesmaid in my wedding, as I was in hers. We bore sons at roughly the same time. She and her husband eventually moved to a little town where they purchased an auto body shop. She began selling Avon products. I visited...once. Alice was fun and upbeat. I felt happy being around her. I envied her. I guess I always had.
At eighteen or nineteen, one's life experiences are seared into their brain. We have so much empty brain matter, I'm guessing, that everything -- music, little day-to-day trifles -- assume vast importance.
Thus, many decades later, I wrote a song to try to capture that time.
I'll admit, I Googled Alice, just to know what had become of her. I found her, but I wouldn't ever try to contact her, because she probably doesn't even remember me, and that would be embarrassing and humbling. Some memories should remain just that -- memories.
Our memories of a person do not encompass the whole person. Maybe they're the way we choose to remember them, or the way we can't help but remember them. But as real as they may be, memories do not define someone.
I don't think one can be defined. When it's all over, no one will capture who we were, because we were a lot of different people. I was probably six years old in this picture and not even a fully formed person yet. I liked my little brother (as far as I know), but I wasn't supremely interested in him, to be honest. I mean, he was a baby. They're not all that interesting except to their parents. He was essentially a novelty. He didn't usurp my place in the family, because I didn't actually have a place. After this photo was taken, I probably climbed the stairs to my bedroom and opened up a book.
My mom, in the photo, looks tired. She'd already borne four kids, and was no doubt not anticipating having any more (and my brother would not be the last). Her life couldn't have been easy, with three teenagers, one about to be married herself, plus me, plus now one more! But just like I can't fathom girls nowadays crying about how difficult life is, with all the disrespect in the workplace (which, to me, is just life), my mom would be baffled by a woman actually planning the number of kids she would have. She had as many as God determined she would deliver. If they arrived eighteen years apart, so be it.
The late sixties came as a revelation to my mom. She'd always asserted herself (my dad needed a lot of help), but now she no longer did so quietly. Something or someone on TV told her that she didn't have to take that crap anymore. She contemplated divorce, but probably never seriously. She was caught between two eras -- one that said "for better or for worse" and another that assured her she could be her own independent woman. She chose the first. Independence was a nice dream, but not not a practical one. Her life and finances were bound up with my dad, even though he'd years before stopped contributing to the financial portion.
She went a little crazy. I hated her for that. Now I understand that she self-medicated the way all of us do. For about a year, she took to her bed, anesthetized. Those lost years do not define her. They're a woozy snapshot.
I learned to fend for myself, which is a gift in itself, although I didn't think so at the time. I was a pre-teen who compared my life to "normal" existences and found mine lacking. I wouldn't learn until many years later that everyone has secrets. Every relationship is fraught, even the most seemingly conventional.
The sixties don't define my mom. Once my dad's sobriety "took", she reverted to her natural self. She was a difficult woman, closed-up; but when she gave up the pills, she reverted to the person I'd always known her to be -- scolding and judgmental, sure, but at least present.
My mom had a hell of a life. Trapped in the times she lived. But she made the right decision in staying with my dad. Had she left him on his own, he'd have died in his fifties. Penniless and vomiting in a gutter.
Instead, Mom and Dad floated into the twilight together. The end was not good. Disease overtook my dad's brain and stole his essence. She was alone. But she was a hell of a strong woman. She persevered until she no longer wanted to.
So, do I know my mom?
No.
And I guess I never will.
I do think, however, that she passed something down to me.
Pure pop music is as old as music itself. When I was a kid, what I called rock music wasn't truly rock. It was pop. But I didn't know better. KRAD was our local station and it called itself "rock 'n roll", even though it played everything -- everything -- from Dean Martin to Bobbie Gentry to the Beach Boys to Roger Miller, to every possible incarnation in between. If I heard a song by a new group like the Supremes, I thought, hmm, that's different. I inherently knew that someone like Roy Orbison was rock (at least some of his songs), but I wasn't quite sure why. My brother bought me an album by the Yardbirds and I hated it. That was rock. I considered the Beatles, who magically appeared on the earth in 1964 to be a rock group, but in actuality and hindsight, they really were pop; just a bit more amped-up pop. Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, who were a tiny bit before my time, were more rock than the Beatles.
Pop isn't easy to define, but like obscenity (I guess), you know it when you hear it. A pure pop song should be bouncy. A repeating refrain is a plus. Even if the lyrics are sad, the music should be uplifting. Often it means nothing (which is how I generally prefer my songs, to be frank). Most lyrics that try to be deep are instead insipid. "Deep" songwriters miss the joy of music. I like my music fun; not studious, and especially not angry.
The first pop song I fell in love with, when I was eight years old, was "It's My Party" by Lesley Gore. I was in fact obsessed with it. I used to stand atop our picnic table in the backyard and frug and sing this song a cappella.
By the time I reached the mature age of ten, I liked this:
Time moved on (okay, by one year) and by then music had changed. Now it was visual as well as aural. Granted, the guys were cute, but leave it to Neil Diamond to write an almost perfect pop song:
It was hard to find a good pop song in the seventies. It was hard to find anything good in the seventies. The seventies was a dreary decade. But every era has at least one thing to offer, and as for pop music, the nineteen seventies offered ABBA.
Conversely, the nineteen eighties were rife with pop. I could get into a whole sociological explanation of why people felt better in the eighties and more open to happiness, but it's really quite evident.
This song is glorious in its pop-ness.
It's almost as if Lesley Gore had been reincarnated, but more blissful.
Sheena wasn't the only one.
Come on, admit it. You liked this song. You really, really boogied on down to this song. Rick Astley was an eighties god:
If you want to just feel good (and who doesn't?), peruse the nineteen eighties pop catalog. I could include another twenty tracks here, but I won't. Springsteen might bemoan how awful President Reagan was; yet he still recorded "Glory Days", so there you go. Sometimes as hard as one tries to be miserable, circumstances budge their way in.
Even as I began listening to country music again in the nineties, I was drawn (albeit reluctantly) to poppish confections. Hate it if you want, but just try not to dance to it:
April wanted me to show off her book trailers, for which I (and only I) can take credit.
I don't actually mind being April's publicist. It's an artistic outlet, and April's a good writer, but a bad, bad techie. I would say that I'd take a percentage of her profits if she had any. But hope springs!
Trust me, the books are good. April is my friend; yet I read her scribblings with a jaundiced eye.
Look over there ~ on the right-hand side of my blog ~ and click on the covers to purchase either or both of her books. April would greatly appreciate it, and if she'll tell you that herself (but make me type it).
There was a time during the early seventies when the singer-songwriter came into fashion. I'm not sure why. It may have had something to do with the doldrums the country was suffering from -- the "misery begets misery" thing. "Everything sucks, so we may as well just wallow in it."
We had a string of hapless leaders. Gerald Ford never wanted to be president, but he assumed the office by default and tried to make the best of it. It didn't work. Ford will best be remembered for"WIN" buttons ~ Whip Inflation Now. Because pinning inane badges to our lapels would solve the country's problems.
He will also be remembered, thanks to Chevy Chase, for falling down a lot. He fell down the Air Force One steps. He bumped his head on doorways. He hit a golf ball into the visitors' gallery and bonked a spectator on the head. Gerald Ford carried a look of perpetual confusion. He did not inspire confidence.
Worse was Jimmy Carter, the eternal scold. Jimmy did not hesitate to tell Americans that the country's problems were OUR fault. If we'd just buck up and live the straight and narrow, everything would be great. Never mind that I was already living the straight and narrow and nothing ever got better. All I got were stern lectures from Jimmy on TV about my "bad attitude". Interest rates were eighteen per cent, but dang, if I just atoned for my sins, HIS life would be so much easier. We all apparently worked for him. What Jimmy really needed was a button ~ "Repent Now".
(Any man whose campaign button features Mr. Peanut is a guaranteed failure.)
Amidst these doldrums, came along the singer-songwriter. James Taylor was the most notorious representative. James ascribed to the Jimmy Carter philosophy ~ if we'd just do our freakin' jobs, everything would be fine. "Just call out my name (you idiot) and I'll be there".
Even at age sixteen I knew that was BS. I called out and nobody was ever "there". Maybe God, but I wasn't entirely sure about Him, either.
James was by far not the only offender. We had to contend with Bread and the precious Jackson Browne, and the even more precious Cat Stevens. Music essentially reeked. Worst of all was Crosby, Stills and Nash, who the pop culture mavens tried to convince us were musical geniuses, when what they really were were three-part harmony singers who needed much, much better songs.
(Yawn)
Granted, not all soft rock recordings were bad.
But you get the picture.
The Eagles are classified as soft rock, but they weren't. They were country-rock. There's a huge difference.
I would be remiss if I left the impression that soft rock singer-songwriters were the only artists played on Top Forty radio in the early-to-mid seventies. Thank the lord for Elton John. But I will say that early seventies music was for the most part tame. We were supposed to think about the songs and "absorb" them.
F that. That's not what music is about; that's not what sears our souls.
There will always be a place for soft rock. The eighties gave us Air Supply. The nineties brought forth John Mayer.
If one is a passive person; if one prefers music that's not too challenging, why not? I don't make judgments; I just tell you what I like and don't like.
But this retrospective will provide, at the very least, a snapshot of how music was, and why I truly hated it.
I almost didn't. The show went off the rails sometime in the middle of the fourth season, and the storyline became more and more implausible. When ABC cancelled the series in 2016, I assumed it was the end, and the "last" episode tied things together nicely. Then CMT announced it would pick the show up, and I had a decision to make. Did I want to continue? CMT's scheduling is messy and hard to disentangle. I'd watched Hulu for free from time to time; now I bit the bullet and purchased a subscription, expressly to watch this show that confounded, perplexed and sometimes bored me. When one has invested four years of their life in characters that now seem like "real" people, it's not easy to just dump them off a cliff. Plus, I'm not a quitter.
I never believed Connie Britton as a country superstar. For one, she is not a good singer. That's no knock; I'm not a good singer, either, but then again, I don't portray one on TV. Rayna was never, ever my favorite character.
I started out hating Juliette Barnes, but it's a tribute to Hayden Panetierre's acting chops that Juliette eventually became sympathetic and, in fact, cherished.
Only diehard fans will remember that Avery was a complete and utter jerk in Season One. The supposed breakout characters were Gunnar and Scarlett. My six-season record is intact of hating Scarlett. It's not the Australian actress's fault. The show runners encumbered her with a preposterous, intelligible accent and a neurosis that was not endearing, but rather, grating.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention Deacon (Charles Esten), who was an alcoholic songwriter and a weak would-be singer; and of course, the Stella Sisters. Esten's main claim to fame before Nashville was as a recurring cast member of Drew Carey's improv show. Now he appears on the Opry, because music fans like recognizable faces. When Connie Britton quit the show, Deacon assumed the main character role because Hayden Panetierre was coping with post-partum syndrome and somebody had to be the star.
When Daphne "forgot" that she had a real father and coolly replaced him with Deacon, I began to have my doubts. But I, like Dallas viewers in the seventies, suspended my belief and chilled.
Other characters have come and gone. Will was always gay, but married Aubrey Peeples (not literally), who went on to fall in love with Goldie Hawn's son, who fell to his death off the roof of a skyscraper...which served to advance the Juliette story. I vaguely remember an early episode in which Juliette's mom shot and killed somebody who was a pain in the ass to Juliette, but the sixth season told us that Mom was bad and that's why Juliette joined the Church of Scientology (er, the Church of Coherent Philosophy).
Things keep chugging along in the Nashville universe.
A word about the music, which ostensibly, the entire series was about: No way in any known universe was the music on Nashville "country". That's not a bad thing. Through the years, the show's music directors have included T Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller, who know good music, but don't cleave to the current fad of country-which-is-sort-of-rock-really. The songs featured on Nashville would never be played on Hot Country Radio. Never. I liked the songs. Some were, in fact, awesome. And Hayden, by the way, if you ever want to forego acting and take up a new pursuit, I'll buy your album (and I never buy albums).
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